A Chinese journalist jailed for four years after reporting on the outbreak of Covid in Wuhan has been sentenced to a further four years behind bars.
Zhang Zhan, 42, has been charged with “picking quarrels and causing trouble”, the same accusation that led to her imprisonment in December 2020 during the early months of the virus’s outbreak, according to the international press freedom group RSF.
The citizen journalist and lawyer posted first-hand accounts from Wuhan that showed crowded hospitals and empty streets while China publicly downplayed the severity of the virus.
Before Friday’s court hearing, a number of press freedom advocacy groups had urged the world to increase diplomatic pressure on Beijing to release Ms Zhang.
Antoine Bernard, the director of advocacy at RSF, said: “Zhang Zhan should be celebrated as an ‘information hero’. Instead, she is once again being prosecuted by the Chinese regime, fighting for her survival in prison.”
Her supporters have continued to express concern for her deteriorating health after she completed multiple hunger strikes and detention in near-complete isolation.
In January, human rights groups said one of Ms Zhang’s most recent hunger strikes had resulted in her being force-fed through a gastric tube.
Her supporters were turned away at her trial on Friday, and Mr Peng Yonghe, the lawyer who volunteered to testify in her defence and called her a “true patriot”, was placed under police control.
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